


Say All I Need

by red_b_rackham



Series: If I Didn't Care (Unrelated Harvey/Donna Fics) [2]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Donna/Stephen (present but...), Episode: s03e03 Unfinished Business, F/M, Harvey Specter/Dana Scott (past) - Freeform, JUST KISS ALREADY, Mutual Pining, Mutually Unrequited, So much angst, UA, i don't know what to tell you, if these two are not your otp for this show, it's complicated - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 10:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13973289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/pseuds/red_b_rackham
Summary: Harvey huffs out a low laugh. “As you love to constantly remind me, Donna, it’s not all about me. So no, not jealous.” Or, the one where Harvey is totally, 100% not okay with Stephen, and Donna just wants him tosay so. (Oneshot)





	Say All I Need

**Author's Note:**

> TOLD YOU THERE'D BE MORE. Major, _majorrrr_ thanks to Rayna, Inky, and [Stars](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky) who all helped me turn my bucket of feels into an actual, coherent fic. I just have a LOT of feelings for these two as I go through this show (for the first time) and I cannot wait to watch more and write more. 
> 
> _Timeline: alternate ending / set after S3E3: "Unfinished Business"_

Harvey arrives first thing in the morning, but Donna only glances up when he plunks a triple-whip latte with skim milk and extra caramel on her desk.

She raises her eyebrow at him and waits.

As he sips his own coffee (Breakfast Blend, black), he offers her a Look that attempts to say _I’m sorry for being an asshole yesterday._ Then he waits. She takes the coffee with a small smile— _you’re forgiven, asshole_ —and he strides into his office, much less moody than when he’d arrived.

Honestly, it’s not the first time that he’s snapped on her for little to no reason, and she doubts it’ll be the last. He has a thing about misplaced anger. She fully understands that not only has tension around here been through the roof since the Darby merger, but sometimes she’s the only one around for Harvey to vent at over the issue of the day. It was uncalled for, but the apology coffee smooths over the incident, as it’s meant to. She follows him into his office.

“Here’s your schedule and cases for today,” she says briskly, handing him a stack of folders. She rattles off appointments and meetings, some notes from Louis about an upcoming court case, and a reminder to pass the Watterson briefs on to Mike before noon. Harvey nods absently and flips open the first folder to double check the stats.

“Oh, and by the way, I’m leaving at five today,” Donna adds.

“Hmm? How come?” Harvey checks the second folder and reaches for his coffee.

“I’ve got a date.”

Harvey chokes and sputters into his cup. Her smile widens. She timed that perfectly.

“What?” he says, dabbing coffee off his tie while she smirks—she can’t help it.

“Date. A thing two people do when they like each other, often with drinks. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”

Harvey frowns. “I heard you. With who?” When she hesitates, though only for a second, he cocks his head in realization. “Not that slimy—”

“Charming.”

“Cocky—”

“Witty.”

“British fixer, Jeeves, or whatever his name is—”

“Stephen.”

“Who keeps skulking around this office on Darby’s orders?”

He’s just trying to bug her, but it’s not working. Donna keeps on smiling, but narrows her eyes at him. “Are you jealous?”

Harvey huffs out a low laugh. “As you love to constantly remind me, Donna, it’s not all about me. So no, not jealous.”

“Then you don’t care that I’m going on a date with Stephen?” She emphasises _date_ and _Stephen_ just to see him twitch. Alas, he does not. 

“I couldn’t care less.” He taps the files and folders into a pile and snatches up his pen. He certainly _looks_ like he doesn’t care, Donna notes. His tone is the airy one, the _I Have Bigger Things To Worry About Than This_ one.

“Have fun,” he adds, and she wishes it sounded at all biting. A little guilt prickles across her cheeks, which she easily ignores. By now, it’s habit.

“I will, thanks,” she says cheerily, flashing him another bright smile, and goes to her desk.

She is relieved but pretends she isn’t also disappointed by his non-reaction.

 

~

 

The following week, a full five _sensational_ dates later, Donna can’t help it: she’s kinda giddy. She hums under her breath as she organizes Harvey’s schedule for the day and flips her hair over her shoulder with a flourish.

Last night had been an especially amazing night and Stephen is amazing, and the show he took her to was _amazing_. It wasn’t Daniel Day Lewis amazing, but it was pretty damn great. Stephen is frankly, magnificent, and she kinda adores him.

Donna spins her chair and doesn’t bother to hide her grin. Each successive date has left her a little higher up on Cloud Nine, and the gorgeous bouquet of flowers Stephen had dropped off in person this morning didn’t hurt either.

The morning slips by so smoothly, she barely notices time passing. It’s not until Mike comes barrelling towards her desk, pale and sweaty, that she realizes it’s almost eleven and she still hasn’t seen Harvey.

“Donna,” says Mike, his eyes wide and frantic.

“What is it?” she demands, her spidey-sense perking up.

“It’s over—the meeting went completely sideways,” says Mike quickly, glancing over his shoulder. “We lost the deal with Pete Turner, and Harvey is on a freaking warpath. I don’t know what’s up with him the past few days, but he’s literally the God of Wrath today. Just— _get down_.”

Harvey comes into view, storming down the hall. Mike hisses and gestures frantically at Donna.

“Run!” he mouths and scampers away like a startled fawn. Donna hasn’t seen him do that since his first week at Pearson-Darby, _née_ Hardman.

“What happened?” she asks when Harvey is within earshot. He’s been edgy for days, but this is something else.

She hasn’t seen Harvey _this_ level of pissed in weeks.

“Not now,” he says.

Scratch that—in _years_.

“Oh my God, Harvey, what happened to your hand?” She tries to grab it for a better look at his bruised, bloody knuckles, but he curls his arm away from her.

“I’m fine.” He actually tries to slam the door to his office. The glass door, with its soft-close hinges that physically cannot slam. Donna stares and debates the wisdom of following him before doing it anyways. She catches the still-closing door and pushes it back open.

“Talk to me,” she says, worried.

“Not _now,_ ” Harvey bites out.

Donna stops. Something is very, very wrong—something more than a meeting gone to shit. He drops into his chair and busies himself with papers, favoring his sore hand, and his shoulders are rigid with furious tension. She hopes it’s more drama with Jessica, but no—no, he would be able to meet her eyes if it had to do with Jessica.

A hot sort of guilt and dread forms a rock in her gut. She can tell just by looking at him what’s really going on—she always can. She wants to be wrong for once but already knows she isn’t.

She opens her mouth to speak, but he beats her to it.

“I need Teller Communications on the line.” His tone is dead flat—the one that’s practiced at sounding neutral but holds back a hundred comments and emotions. The tone she hates because it shuts her out of reading him as she normally, effortlessly, can. “And whenever Mike is finished cowering under his desk, send him to me. Get Louis to follow up with Turner, smooth things over, and find a backdoor with Goldstack.”

“Harvey—”

He stands so suddenly, his chair smacks the cabinet behind him, loud enough to make her jump.

“I’m going to early lunch.”

“What about Mike?”

He brushes past her. “I’ll find him when I get back.”

 

~

 

Donna doesn’t see Harvey return. She does, however, see the trail of destruction he leaves behind.

Mike is actually running between hallways to find and avoid Harvey alternately, depending on the hour. Louis staggers by around two in the afternoon, nervous and twitchy. He slides Donna a handful of blue folders for the Goldstack case and bolts away without so much as a word. Around four, a couple of the new interns blow past her desk, sobbing. By five, Jessica comes looking for Harvey, her brows creased with barely suppressed anger herself.

“I...haven’t seen him since he went for lunch,” Donna answers honestly.

“When you do see him? Tell him to find me. Immediately.”

Donna knows better than to ask why.

By six, Donna knows he is actively avoiding her—he should have come back to his office by now. She has half a mind to go look for him, corner him somewhere, but leaving her post would give him the chance to get into his office to grab his things _without_ running into her. So she waits and is finally rewarded, at about quarter after eight. Everyone else has gone home to enjoy their Friday night when Harvey slinks down the dark hall.

Donna stops typing and leans back in her chair. “Hey, did you talk to Jessica?”

“Yes,” Harvey says sharply without looking up. Clearly _that_ meeting went well.

“Where’ve you been hiding all afternoon?” she asks breezily, hoping to diffuse his sour mood. _The empty office on the opposite of the building_ , she thinks. Knows.

“I’ve been busy,” he replies. He isn’t putting on the dead, unreadable voice anymore, but this isn’t much better. This is the placating, shallow _Everything’s Fine_ voice.

“Mm, I know—I so enjoyed the trail of bodies you left in the office today. One of the weeping interns was hysterical enough to be sent home, and Louis looked like he’d crapped his pants when he dropped off the Goldstack files. You would’ve loved it.”

She chuckles, but he doesn’t crack a smile as he passes her. Once again, she follows him into his office. His knuckles are wrapped in bandages from the first aid kit in the kitchen.

“Maybe you should go on the warpath more often,” Donna quips, plopping into the chair opposite his desk. She’s going to wait him out about the hand. “Though if you’re gonna rip everyone to shreds—” she affects a voice halfway between a bad Sean Connery and nasal Al Pacino—“now see here, bub, you’re gonna want to cover your tracks better, see.” She clicks her tongue and makes finger guns at him.

Still, he says nothing.

“Okay, you usually like my lame mob-guy thing. Are you gonna tell me who besmirched your family honor or can I just do my Donna thing and deduce it?” She waggles her eyebrows like it’s a game.

This, finally, gets a reaction. He scowls at her. She wants him to invent an excuse she can pretend to believe, to hear him say his anger has nothing to do with her, and they can both go home.

“I had an allergic reaction to that greenhouse monstrosity on your desk,” he says, clipped and cold. “I used the empty office beside Katrina in between meetings so I didn’t have to be near it.”

_Bingo._

“I know your allergies, Harvey,” Donna says matter-of-factly. “None of them are flower-related.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you don’t know everything about me like you think you do.” He slams his briefcase shut harder than he needs to. “Go home, it’s late.”

“Stop being stubborn.” This time she invokes one of her famous tones: the _I Will Start Shit If You Don’t Talk To Me Right Now_ one.

“Stop bothering me.”

“Stop being a child.”

“Throw the flowers out, Donna. They’re giving me a rash.” He grabs his coat and heads for the door, avoiding her eyes again and still favoring his now-purpling hand with the wrapped knuckles.

“Oh no, no, no.” She stands. She’s not going home with his non-excuses and boatload of avoidance today—today, she’s going to call him out. “You don’t get to tear around here, pissing on everybody, when we both know you’re mad at me. Don’t put your issues on everybody else. Talk to me—start with what happened to your hand.”

He rounds on her. “My _issue_ is that Turner didn’t tell me about his account in the Caymans, and now I have to figure out how to backtrack through the deal between him and Goldstack, when it should’ve been a rock solid case. My _issue_ is that he fired me when I tried to save his stupid ass, and my _issue_ is that I hate lilies because they give me a rash. Throw the damn flowers out.”

“Your _issue_ is that you hate that I’m dating Stephen,” Donna shoots back. His special combination of emotional unawareness and avoidance would be astounding if she wasn’t so used to it. “And I love the damn flowers. You don’t get to be jealous and pretend you’re not, or make me feel guilty for being happy with him.”

“I’m not _jealous._ ” Harvey makes it sound like it’s a ridiculous idea, and, were it not for his ultra-shitty mood the past week, she almost could have believed him.

“Just admit that it bothers you that I’m with Stephen. Once. Out loud.”

Harvey glares. “Stephen makes my job harder on a daily basis and I don’t want Darby having his hand in every deal I make. I _especially_ don’t want you distracted and making mistakes as a result of whatever’s going on.”

“So the problem is that it’s Stephen, or the problem is that it’s anyone?” She crosses her arms over her chest, irritation flaring.

“I think I made it pretty damn clear it’s Stephen,” Harvey replies sharply.

“Right, I just wanted to be clear on who I’m allowed to go out with or if I’m allowed to date anyone at all.” Donna ignores his irritable huff and adds, “Heaven forbid I have a life outside of work, right?”

“I don’t care who you date, Donna,” Harvey says. “I don’t want him around here.” He’s reaching for some falsely casual tone now, but his dark eyes are still smoldering, angry and holding back from her. “I just don’t want him affecting my job, or yours.”

“Yes, clearly.” She rolls her eyes. “For the record, Harvey, you don’t get to dictate my life outside these walls. Believe it or not, I _can_ actually do my job and date at the same time—even someone _you_ don’t get along with.”

“Don’t act like you’ve been completely fine with the women I’ve been with,” he retorts. She realizes he’s been waiting to have this fight all day, maybe even all week, and he’s not ready to back down.

“I’ve never said anything about the women you’ve been with.” Donna shakes her head in exasperation, pushing back. They’ve tumbled over the line between business and personal now, but Donna keeps going before she thinks to stop them. “I’ve never tried to stop you—or thrown a damn temper tantrum about who _you_ dated.”

Harvey makes a scoffing noise. “You couldn’t stand Veronica and you made a face whenever I talked about Zoe.”

“I didn’t _make a face_ ,” Donna says. She hadn’t minded Zoe at all; she’d just always had a gut feeling that she and Harvey would fall apart. Sometimes she hated being right. “And Veronica was horrible—you said so yourself after you broke up with her.”

“You never liked Scottie.”

“Bullshit—I tried to help you _get_ Scottie because she told me she loved you, and I know you loved her too. You’re just too much of a coward to admit it.”

“Don’t ever call me a coward.” Harvey’s voice is low and harsh. She swallows an apology when he adds, “You can’t tell me that you shoved your face in my personal life and still be pissed at me for doing the same thing.”

Heat rushes to her cheeks because, okay, yeah, he’s not wrong. She makes a feeble attempt to back them up a few steps and asks, “What’d you do to your hand, Harvey?”

“What, you don’t want to beat me up about my past girlfriends some more?” he snaps.

“I’m not trying to _beat you up_. I’m trying to say that Scottie was the one you always chased, always pined for—you were crushed when you thought she betrayed you. You’ll never admit it, but I know you were. I’m saying if anyone was right for you, it was her.”

“I didn’t love Scottie.” His cheeks are flushed and he advances towards her, tossing his coat and briefcase on the chair.

“All right, then why the hell not? She’s perfect for you! She’s smart, gorgeous, charming, can actually beat you once in a while.” Donna throws her hand up in frustration. “You actually _have_ feelings, Harvey, so why is it so hard for you to talk about them for once? You can love Scottie and hate Stephen and just _say_ so.”

“I _care_ about her—it’s different.” He’s almost shouting and somehow, it’s satisfying to see him lose some of his rigid control for once.

“Explain the difference then, because I saw the way you looked at her, Harvey. I was there when you went after her. What—”

“Damn it, Donna—she’s not the one I’m in love with!”

Donna freezes and the sudden lengthy silence thrums against her ears, squishes her lungs and makes spots dance before her eyes. For a second, all thoughts in her head screech to a grinding halt, like a train derailing off a cliff, and she stares at Harvey without really seeing him.

For all her abilities to know a ridiculous amount of things about nearly everyone, including and especially Harvey, she didn’t see _this_ coming. She just thought Harvey was furiously jealous that he was no longer her number-one priority day in and day out. He was being selfish, he was being…She didn’t expect…hadn’t thought…

He presses his palm over his mouth, like he can stuff the words back in or stop more from falling out, and regret etches faint lines in his forehead. After a few moments, he regains some semblance of composure and lets his hand fall away.

“I punched the bathroom mirror.” Harvey shakes his head and turns away from her to re-examine his swollen hand.

Because he saw her with Stephen this morning, Donna realizes. When Stephen brought the flowers and they flirted and he kissed her. Her mind kicks back into gear, this time too fast. Harvey hasn’t said what she heard him say just now—he couldn’t have. She has a rule. _They_ have a rule. And this is _Harvey_ , for God’s sake, and he doesn’t—he can’t—he _wouldn’t_ —

“And I _do_ hate Stephen.”

She swallows hard, trying to hold herself together. Donna’s practiced at keeping her own complex feelings in an unopened box, ever since she met him. Ever since that one night, before they came here. She will never open that box and risk everything, no matter what.

“You don’t mean me,” she whispers, her voice cracking, heart thundering against her ribs. “Take it back—say it’s not me, right now.”

“What?”

“Whoever you’re in love with—you have to unsay what you just said.” Tears burn at the edges of her eyes and she clenches her fist tight at her side, clinging to a thread of control. “Because if you don’t, everything changes, and we can’t go back. We can’t cross that line. We have a rule for a reason.”

“What if...” His eyes are dark and dangerous in the dimness of the office’s afterhours low lighting. They trace over her features and goosebumps prickle over her arms.

“No,” she says, sharper than she meant to be.

Harvey clenches his jaw. “What do you want me to say?”

“Say you didn’t mean it. That it’s not me.” That little bit of control is squeezing out between her fingers and her heart flutters with panic. “We can’t do this— _I_ can’t do this.”

“Donna…” He moves towards her, but she takes a step back.

There’s a crack in his façade now. Harvey Specter, high-profile lawyer and the best closer this city has ever seen, has peeled back to reveal _Harvey_ —just Harvey, her Harvey. The one who actually cooks for her once in a while, who makes stupid puns when he’s had too much red wine at three in the morning. The one who eats nacho chips as his cheat food when he watches _Top Gun_ on his super-expensive leather couch that he doesn’t even like except for how it looks in his apartment.

Her hands tremble.

She can’t look at him and get the words out at the same time. If they break each other’s hearts and can’t work together anymore...

 _I cannot lose you_. That’s what it comes down to. It’s not just the job, it’s _him_.

She shakes her head and whispers, “Take it back.”

And there’s that silence again—the thick, oppressive pause that smothers her until she is dizzy. He clenches his jaw and his eyes glisten. She wants to scream or cry, to say something and take away the extraordinary hurt that passes over his features, and then the crack seals up, hiding the pain before she could properly take it in. Her Harvey disappears under those familiar layers: the famous Harvey Specter, the senior partner, the brilliant lawyer, the asshole, the man with a thousand walls that can never be scaled—not even by her, not even now.

He clears his throat. “I meant...someone else. Obviously.” His eyes flick to hers. He’s cold and distant now, and it makes her chest ache. “You’re like a sister to me. Or a cousin. Somebody that you look forward to seeing at Christmas, and you’re really glad to see leave after.”

Donna swallows hard, hating that he’s using her own words against her. If she’d known how much it would hurt him to hear her say it…but, no. Nothing would’ve changed. _Rule one: never, ever sleep with the people you work with._

“Don’t worry about it, Donna.” He gives his head a little shake, picking up his coat and briefcase. “This conversation never happened.”

It’s his _Lawyer_ tone, now—concealed, casual, careful, smooth. It slices her deep, but she doesn’t cry out, because she asked for it. She demanded it.

“Throw the flowers out.”

Donna watches him leave and she stays rooted to the spot until she hears the distant ding of the elevator. Then, she covers her mouth with her hands and cries.

 

**-end-**


End file.
